US forces found al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a million-dollar compound in an upscale summer resort a little more than an hour's drive from Pakistan's capital.
A small US team conducted a helicopter raid on the compound yesterday.
After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden and an adult son, one unidentified woman and two men - identified as the courier and his brother - were dead.
US forces were led to the fortress-like three-storey building after more than four years tracking one of bin Laden's most trusted couriers, whom US officials said was identified by men captured after the 11 September, 2001 attacks.
‘Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al-Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with or protected by bin Laden,’ a senior administration official said in a briefing for reporters.
Bin Laden was finally found after authorities discovered in August 2010 that the courier lived with his brother and their families in an unusual and extremely high-security building.
‘When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound,’ a senior administration official said.
‘The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harboured a high-value terrorist target. The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama bin Laden,’ another administration official said.
The home is in Abbotabad, a town about 60km north of Islamabad, that is relatively affluent and home to many retired members of Pakistan's military.
The building, about eight times the size of other nearby houses, sat on a large plot of land that was relatively secluded when it was built in 2005.
Intense security measures included 3.6 metre to 5.5 metre (12- to 18-foot) outer walls topped with barbed wire and internal walls that sectioned off different parts of the compound.
Two security gates restricted access, and residents burned their rubbish, rather than leaving it for collection as did their neighbours.
‘It is also noteworthy that the property is valued at approximately $1m but has no telephone or Internet service connected to it,’ an administration official said. ‘The brothers had no explainable source of wealth.’
US analysts realised that a third family lived there in addition to the two brothers, and the age and makeup of the third family matched those of the relatives - including his youngest wife - they believed would be living with bin Laden.
‘Everything we saw, the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers' background and their behaviour and the location of the compound itself was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden's hide-out to look like,’
another Obama administration official said.
Abbotabad is a popular summer resort, located in a valley surrounded by green hills near Pakistani Kashmir.
